July 31st, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
By Jeff Watts, SyndicateVoice Product Manager
Question: What do the following silly things have in common?
1. what is the approximate size of a banjo
2. redheads and the men that love them
3. how to hit the sasquatch
4. used men’s hunting socks
Answer: they are all actual phrases that searchers have typed in to discover various Bazaarvoice clients’ review content. (For the record, I cannot fathom why someone was searching for “used men’s hunting socks”.)
The long tail of search engine data tells a fascinating story that smart marketers are listening to. It is not just silly phrases like those above, but obscure and unique terms – perhaps used only once or twice – that give insight into what your visitors are really looking for. Long tail search terms might not match your page titles or your carefully crafted page descriptions, but they do match some other combination of words on your page – even when you are not anticipating them. For many sites, the unanticipated terms account for over 80% of the search terms and over 50% of the referrals, and this makes it imperative to understand how best to target those terms.
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July 20th, 2007 by Wayne Stribling Former VP of Client Services
Yesterday was a very exciting day for us as it marked the official launch of Ratings & Reviews for our newest client, Wal-Mart. For the first time, Wal-Mart shoppers can go online to read and write reviews about products they bought from Wal-Mart stores or Walmart.com.
As stated in Wal-Mart's press release:
"It is the No. 1 customer-requested feature," said Cathy Halligan, Chief Marketing Officer. She went on to say "We will use those customer reviews and ratings to be able to provide more direct information about how our customers feel and make decisions on a case-by-case basis."
To read the full article, click here – http://news.com.com/Walmart.com+to+let+customers+review+
merchandise/2100-1038_3-6197478.html?tag=nefd.top
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July 18th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
[post from Lisa Roberts, Director of Marketing]
Tuesday we hosted a great webinar with Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. As one of the pioneers of "word of mouth marketing", it was especially interesting to hear him define the term. As Andy says, word of mouth marketing is "giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for the conversation to take place". We all know that word of mouth is not a new concept, but it has historically been generated by "experts" or celebrities in a very controlled way. Peoples' buying habits have evolved, and the "experts" are now simply "people like me". Companies today must re-focus their marketing strategies to promote good products, evolve them in a way that is most useful to customers, and give customers the tools to spread the word about their experiences. As Brett said, "The barrier to converse has been significantly reduced." The permanent record that your customers create can make or break your product and brand.
We also talked with Andy about the "5 T's" that he suggests companies think about when implementing or improving their word of mouth strategy. There were two points that really stuck with me:
- The first step is to find "Talkers"; people who will talk about your product. As Andy points out, this is not generally your regular customer that interacts with your brand/products all the time. This is often your new customer. This is someone who has just experienced what you have to offer and is excited to share their opinions. Of course, it can also be your regular customer experiencing something new about your product. If so, you want to make sure it's something they have asked for and that further supports all the reasons why they're already one of your loyal customers.
- Negative reviews provide many opportunities for a very positive user experience. This is something Sam wrote about a couple weeks ago. Negative reviews can help another customer make a more satisfactory purchase decision, can help a manufacturer improve a product in a very distinct and focused way, or can provide the opportunity for a company to "Take Part" and simply say "we hear you and we're going to try to improve".
Check out all of the webinar slides on Slideshare. We're also happy to share the full webinar with audio if you email lisa @ bazaarvoice.com for the download link, username, and password.
Andy also covered this on his blog.
July 12th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Over a year ago we announced the "Ratings J-Curve", analyzing the distribution of product ratings across our set of retail clients. 80% of reviews were positive, an average rating of 4.3 out of 5. Over a year later, and now over 100 clients across 12 industries, that hasn't changed. Apparel manufacturers and retailers were slower to adopt Bazaarvoice Ratings and Reviews than other retailers, in large part due to fear of negative reviews. We saw some early data with our first apparel clients that was encouraging, but not enough to assert a trend. Now that we have over 10 clients in the apparel category we analyzed the data in aggregate. There is a pleasant J-curve surprise when we segment product rating data by apparel manufacturers and retailers… Apparel reviews are even more positive than the retail average. 87% of reviews are positive at an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. Further, for most of these apparel clients we see strong review volume. 
This supports the hypothesis that people want to share positive feedback on their purchases. Customers are especially proud of smart apparel decisions, perhaps because it exhibits smart decision about style and is an extension of themselves. Regardless, it's another data point that ratings and reviews for apparel retailers and manufacturers is a positive move, in more ways than one!
July 10th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
You have probably heard the recent story about Sprint Nextel firing 1,000 of their highest maintenance customers. CNET’s News.com covers the story, and the reader discussion is very active with 125 comments so far. You can also easily find this article by searching for “Sprint customer service” on Google, where it is currently the sixth match on the first page of Google’s search results. Actually, two of the top ten matches are this story, and three of the ten (two individual blogs and one article at MSN Money) are very negative commentary about Sprint customer service.
Now, I have nothing against Sprint. But I find it fascinating that in this day and age the way we consume information is so dependent upon Web search results. We spend more time consuming media online than in any other medium. If you are considering Sprint as a customer and searching for “Sprint customer service” on Google to learn about the experience you may have with them, 30% of the first ten matches are negative and 20% are about them firing high maintenance customers.
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